


Stardust Road

by Anonymous



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-21 20:17:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12465112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Ai has… strange… ideas about their relationship.





	Stardust Road

**Author's Note:**

> tbh i thought i dreamed that line but no... it's real...  
> also i'm sorry i don't know what this is like at all

Ai has… strange… ideas about their relationship.

Ai has strange ideas about most everything, granted, but it’s this one in particular that Ai seems most fixated on. In the weeks since the incident with Blue Angel, Ai had finally stopped leveling ridiculous accusations regarding his interest in Aoi Zaizen. In truth, he had grown to expect those kinds of comments from the AI, and shaken them off with an impassive word or two, but this… This had come out of nowhere on an uneventful day, spent monitoring a quiet Link Vrains for suspicious activity. And, like with Blue Angel, Ai had been reluctant to give it up.

Yuusaku hesitates before the door to his home. He knows what’s about to happen, but what is he to do? He steps through the threshold without bothering even to mutter his arrival.

“So? So?” Ai’s voice echoes from the small living room approximately two seconds after Yuusaku walks in the door. The tone of Ai’s voice would be vaguely suggestive on anyone else. Yuusaku, however, has long since dismissed this as Ai’s normal way of speaking. “How was it?”

Yuusaku slips off his shoes and glances over at Ai. They’re standing atop his duel disk on the box where Ai had insisted on being placed when Yuusaku had left that morning. Now that Yuusaku is within sight, Ai is attempting to punctuate their statement with a wiggle of their eyebrows, and… yeah. Yuusaku thinks that speaks for itself. Even if the venue was nicer than normal, he’s been working on the data they’d stolen from SOL Technologies all day. There are times where Ai’s antics can be vaguely refreshing, like alongside Playmaker’s effortless confidence, but this isn’t one of them.

Slowly he descends the stairs. He’s just going to ignore that and go to sleep-

“Yuusaku! You’re so cold!” Of course, Ai doesn’t take very kindly to being ignored. Though Yuusaku wishes they’d just shut up, Ai continues, “I’m trying to be supportive of your blooming youthful romance! You can ask me anything!”

No, Yuusaku absolutely does _not_ want to know what Ai knows about youthful romance. “I’m not going to ask you anything. There’s nothing to ask.”

“You mean you’re _not_ making out with the hot dog man whenever you leave me here?”

“I’m not.” Yuusaku punctuates the word with a glare. Unfortunately, Ai is not nearly so obedient to Yuusaku as they are to Playmaker. They cross their arms and make their best approximation of a glare.

“Then why didn’t you take me with you, huh?”

“I have my reasons.” Yuusaku refuses to give in to the mess Ai is trying to make of his relationships. Responding to this taunting will only make it worse.

But no matter what he does, Ai takes it as a sign of victory. “So then you are-”

“ _No_ ,” Yuusaku replies sharply. Ai mutters something too fast to parse. Still, Yuusaku thinks he hears _scary_ and _completely unfair_ somewhere in the mix.

Fine. He hadn’t wanted to resort to this, mainly because he’s sure Ai has been waiting for it. But, if it will finally end this inane conversation, then… “First-”

“There it is!” Ai yells over him. From acting like a kicked puppy, back to their usual self in the blink of an eye…

Yuusaku doesn’t bother to repeat himself, already used to Ai’s ways. He continues, “Kusanagi and I aren’t in a romantic relationship. Second. Therefore, your attempts at ‘advice’ have no meaning. And third, you’re a nuisance. It’s much easier to work without your constant interruptions.”

“Oh.” Kicked puppy, again. But only briefly, so Yuusaku doesn’t bother feeling bad about it. “But even if you’re not, you _definitely_ -”

Yuusaku has no more patience. He channels Playmaker when he says sharply, “Be quiet.”

“Fine…”

Ai finally relents, and Yuusaku lets out a long breath. Living or not, it seems to Yuusaku that Ai goes out of their way to make his life more difficult. Ai would say their intentions come from a good heart. Mostly, Yuusaku wishes that they wouldn’t try and interfere at all.

“Good night, Ai,” he says, after moving the box to the far corner of his room. If Ai was so insistent on being left on that box, then that’s where they’ll spend the night. After all this pestering, Yuusaku has no intention of inviting any more.

Ai calls too-loud to his retreating back, “Ah, kindness! He has a heart after all!”

“Of course,” he thinks he hears after Ai’s ridiculous declaration. Is that… Roboppy? He’s sure he programmed Roboppy not to speak unless addressed, the exception being when declaring a task complete. Ai’s earlier request comes back to him, and he wonders if Ai is planning something… But it’s a problem for another day.

Yuusaku sheds his jacket and drapes it across the back of his chair before falling into bed. The breath he releases this time is… relief, almost. He stares at the subtle texture of the ceiling and tries to convince himself to fall asleep. That doesn’t work, and never has. Immediately, he begins to think too much about what he said he wouldn’t.

Stardust Road.

Even if he had never been there, before today, he knows what it is. The information about the ocean view and the luminescent plankton lights. The beautiful path whose gentle slope is suited for the young and the elderly alike. Those are the things that make up Stardust Road. He knows all of them.

He also knows what it _is_.

He is, after all, in high school. The idle conversation, the shameless gossip with no merit… No matter how little interest he has in reciprocating, he still overhears.

Stardust Road is the number one date spot in Den City, especially after sunset.

Was he foolish for working so long? He had continued long after he could have reasonably stopped for the day, certainly. But the work had been about Hanoi. Once he’d started, it had been difficult to stop. The hours had slipped away until he had almost fallen asleep in his chair...

Because falling asleep around others is always easier. That’s the reason he never feels too bad about resting his head on his folded arms during class, or taking a catnap out in the plaza between duels.

Though, it’s always been easiest around Kusanagi.

Kusanagi is the only person he trusts himself to fall asleep with just the two of them alone, ever since they found each other. Ever since they found each other _again_ , Kusanagi always says, remembering fondly something of years past. But Yuusaku _can’t._ Everything he remembers starts alone in the desolate white of a room with no exit. Starts with a voice in his head. Starts with the fear that even if he wins forever from now on, he still won’t be able to escape.

Phantom shocks are the sensation he wakes to more nights than he’d like to admit. And out of everyone who’s ever tried to help him, Kusanagi is the only one who can even come _close_ to understanding that.

This is what had happened, today on Stardust Road.

“Yuusaku?”

Yuusaku gestures at the empty road. No one will come, if they hadn’t already. He's called out for Kusanagi, and Kusanagi seems to understand. “Hold on. Let me close up.”

As Yuusaku rests his arms against the rail to the practiced clatter of Kusanagi closing up shop behind him, he stares out at a point nowhere in particular over the ocean. Kusanagi joins him shortly. Side by side they stand and watch the sunset, leaning elbows brushing against the rail. The silence between them isn't awkward at all.

And when Kusanagi breaks it, that is natural too. “You’re thinking about something,”

Yuusaku hums. He is. What about, he has no intention of telling.

“We’ll draw out Revolver soon,” Kusanagi says. As always, he fills in the gaps Yuusaku leaves. Though usually he’s right, this time, Yuusaku is glad he’s wrong.

Because though that isn’t what’s on Yuusaku’s mind, it’s still nice to be reassured. Finding Revolver means the start of the end of things. The end of things means moving on. He’s been told so many times that moving on will be _good_. For so long, he couldn’t see it. But Kusanagi could, and Yuusaku chooses to believe in that. “I know. Thanks.”

In the present, Yuusaku closes his eyes. Visions of his cracked ceiling and torn wallpaper disappear. He was thinking, then, that he’d like to close the distance between them. But he hadn't.

Things like love…

They're emotions he doesn't mind letting slip through the cracks, every once and a while. But the words he wants to say can wait. The things from their past they still have to settle come first. And that too is what Yuusaku choses to believe.

His breath evens out. Sleep pulls at the edges of his awareness. Right before he falls asleep, he thinks that today had been too nice of a day to sully with nightmares. He can only hope that his dreams will be compliant.


End file.
